living statuary, when well done, unless it has been once seen. We advise those attempting to get up exhibitions for the benefit of some charitable object, to try a few groups of living statuary; it is very effective to an audience.

LIGHTS AND SHADES.

If you wish to throw the background of a tableau into shadow, place screens between the lights at the sides of the stage and that part of the picture you wish to have dark; vice versa with the foreground. Particular points or characters may be more brilliantly lighted than others, by placing at the side of the stage a strong light within a large box, open at one side, and lined with bright tin reflectors.

side, and lined

Lights of different colors can be thrown successively on a picture, and made to blend one with another, by placing the various colored fires in boxes three feet square, open at one with reflectors. Those arranged at the sides of the stage on pivots can be turned on, one after another, so as to throw their light on the stage. Before one light has entirely vanished from the scene, a different color should gradually take its place.

CHAPTER XXIX.

ETIQUETTE WITH CHILDREN.

T is against the rules of strict etiquette to take a child when making formal calls, as they are a

IT

restraint upon conversation, even if they are not troublesome about touching forbidden articles, or teasing to go home.

Never take a child to a funeral, or to the house of mourning.

Never allow a child to take a meal at a friend's house without special invitation. It is impossible to know how much she may be inconvenienced, while her regard for the mother would deter her from sending the little visitor home again.

Never allow a child to handle goods in a store.

Never send for children to meet visitors in the drawing-room, unless the visitors themselves request to see them. Make their stay then very brief, and > be careful that they are not troublesome.

Never take a child to church until it is old enough to remain perfectly quiet. Although you may be accustomed to its restless movements, and not disturbed by them, others near you will certainly feel annoyed by them.

It is not etiquette to put a child to sleep in the

room of a guest, nor to allow children to go at all to a guest's room, unless especially invited to do so, and even then to make long stay there.

Etiquette excludes children from all companies given to grown persons, all parties and balls, except such as are especially given for their pleasure.

When invited to walk or drive, never take a child, unless it has been invited, or you have requested permission to do so; even in the latter case, the consent is probably given more from good-nature than from any desire to have a juvenile third to the party.

Never crowd children into pic-nic parties, if they have not been invited. They generally grow weary and very troublesome before the day is over.

Never take a child to spend the day with a friend unless it has been included in the invitation.

Never allow children to be in the drawing-room if strangers are present.

Never permit children to handle the ornaments in the drawing-room of a friend.

Never allow a child to pull a visitor's dress, play with the jewelry or ornaments she may wear, take her parasol or satchel for a plaything, or in any way annoy her.

Train children early to answer politely when addressed, to avoid restless, noisy motions when in company, and gradually inculcate a love of the gentle courtesies of life. By making the rules of etiquette habitual to them, you remove all awkwardness and restraint from their manners when they are old enough to go into society.

Never send a child to sit upon a sofa with grown people, unless they express a desire to have it do so. Never crowd a child into a carriage seat between two grown people.

Never let a child play with a visitor's hat or cane.

If children are talented, be careful you do not weary your friends, and destroy their own modesty by "showing them off," upon improper occasions. What may seem wonderful to a mother, may be an unutterable weariness to a guest, too polite to allow the mother to perceive the incipient yawn.

Never allow children to visit upon the invitation of other children. When they are invited by the older members of the family, it is time to put on their "best bibs and tuckers."

The custom for having children in the drawingroom for morning or evening parties, or in the dining-room with the dessert at dinner companies, is not only often an annoyance to the guests, but bad for the children themselves.

It is one of the first duties of parents to train their children at home as they would have them appear abroad. An English lady writes thus:

If, then, we desire that our children shall become ladies and gentlemen, can we make them so, think you, by lavishing money upon foreign professors, dancing-masters, foreign travel, tailors, and dressmakers? Ah, no! good breeding is far less costly, and begins far earlier than those things. Let our little ones be nurtured in an atmosphere of gentleness and kindness from the nursery upwards; let them

grow up in a home where a rude gesture or an illtempered word are alike unknown; where between father and mother, master and servant, mistress and maid, friend and friend, parent and child, brother and sister, prevails the law of truth, of kindness, of consideration for others, and forgetfulness of self. Can they carry into the world, whither we send them later, aught of coarseness, of untruthfulness, of slatternliness, of vulgarity, if their home has been orderly, if their parents have been refined, their servants well mannered, their friends and playmates kindly and carefully trained as themselves? Do we want our boys to succeed in the world; our girls to be admired and loved; their tastes to be elegant; their language choice; their manners simple, charming, refined, and graceful; their friendship elevating? Then we must ourselves be what we would have our children to be, remembering the golden maxim, that good manners, like charity, must begin at home.

"Good manners are an immense social force. We should, therefore, spare no pains to teach our children what to do, and what to avoid doing, in their pathway through life.

"On utilitarian as well as social principles, we should try to instruct our children in good manners; for whether we wish them to succeed in the world, or to adorn society, the point is equally important. We must never lose sight of the fact, that here teachers and professors can do little, and that the only way in which it is possible to acquire the habits of good society is, to live in no other."